How to: LCARS for Mac
Yes, Apple has its fan boys, but those who love Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek have created entire alien languages, learned to speak them and even show up in public (ie conventions) dressed as these aliens speaking that refined jibberish—that’s real dedication.
If you’re a Mac geek and a trekie, then one of things you have to do to maintain your cred is implement LCARS—computer interface used in the Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine and a slew movies—on your Macintosh.
Things you’ll need: GeekTool 2.1.2 (1.44MB, system monitoring), icalBuddy 1.6.5 (107K, calender / events display), Bowtie 1.0 beta 2 (1.9MB, iTunes control and display) and, of course, the original image.
Your template for putting it all together is available from momoses’ flikr photostream (mouse over to view the functional areas, including listing of shell, etc commands used) who let the world know what he’s been up to via the good offices of the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr Group.
This is a very hands on project and will take you not a little (hours) time to complete. But, like changing your own oil and rotating the tires, there is a certain satisfaction in doing it yourself.
That said, a couple tips: You can drag and drop the order of items in the GeekTool groups listing (ie good for layout) and don’t be too perturbed if GeekTool quits a few times (hasn’t done any harm here).
For everyone smart enough to avoid such displays of bravado, there are the Star Trek Movie Countdown and Trek Trivia Dashboard widgets—click to download and click to install.
See also:
— LCARS on the iPhone: The tricorder comes to life
— iPod touch finding new niches in Afghanistan, Iraq
Filed under: Apple Evangelizing, How to, Mac, Software
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